x, 198 pages : 22 cm

Before there was Marilyn Monroe, there was Lana Turner. She was born Julia Jean Mildred Frances Turner on February 8, 1920, in Wallace, Idaho. When Lana was ten years old, her father was fatally black-jacked. She and her mother moved to Los Angeles, where, still a teenager at Hollywood High School, she was "discovered" by the publisher of The Hollywood Reporter at - no, not Schwab's! - the Top Hat Cafe. She made her movie debut at the age of sixteen and signed a contract with MGM a year later for a hundred dollars a week. Lana's auburn hair was bleached for Idiot's Delight (1938), and she remained a blonde for the rest of her life

One of MGM's most successful leading ladies, Lana Turner started in Ziegfeld Girl, The Bad and the Beautiful, Peyton Place, Imitation of Life, Madame X, and The Postman Always Rings Twice. Yet her larger-than-life work on the screen took second billing to her dramatic private life. She married seven times and conducted colorful romances with the likes of Clark Gable, Frank Sinatra, Howard Hughes, and Tyrone Power, whom she always claimed to be the love of her life, but who went on to marry another woman

Includes bibliographical references (pages 189-190) and index

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